a likeness of Lord Leycester, and added an ideal poetry of his own."

"You mean that it is not like him?" she said.

Mr. Etheridge painted on, deaf to both of them.

"No," he said, looking at the picture with a cold smile. "It is like him, but it—honors him. It endows him with a poetry which he does not possess."

"You know him?" said Stella.

[36]

[36]

"Who does not?" he answered, and his thin lips curled with a smiling sneer.

A faint color came into Stella's face, and she raised her eyes for a moment.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Lord Leycester has made himself too famous—I was going to say infamous—"

A vivid crimson rushed to her face, and left it pale again the next instant.

"Do not," she said, then added quickly, "I mean do not forget that he is not here to defend himself."

He looked at her with a sinister scrutiny.

"I beg your pardon. I did not know he was a friend of yours," he said.

She raised her eyes and looked at him steadily.

"Lord Leycester is no friend of mine," she said, quietly.

"I am glad of it," he responded.

Stella's eyes darkened and deepened in a way peculiar to her, and her color came. It was true that Lord Leycester was no friend of hers, she had but seen and spoken with him by chance, and for a few moments; but who was this Mr. Adelstone that he should presume to be glad or sorry on her account?

He was quick to see that he had made a slip, and quick to recover 

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